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I
played Echoes of the Everwar, Part I: The Prisoner of Skull Hill
with Makras, my dwarf oracle of Groetus.
The Echoes of the Everwar is a four-part series of Tier 7-11 scenarios
from back in Season 1 of PFS1, and (I think) Paizo’s first real attempt at a
major connected series of adventures in organized play. I appreciate the attempt, but I don’t think
this one (a forgettable and overlong series of battles) got the series off to a
very good start. Cool cover though!
SPOILERS!
Before
getting started, there’s a hefty amount of backstory to cover, both for this
individual scenario and for the Echoes of the Everwar series as a
whole.
About
500 years ago, just at the beginning of the Everwar, a very wealthy Osirian
merchant named Khalfani Zhuberi decided to extend his trading empire by sending
forth three concubines to three separate points on the frontier. In order to keep track of them, each was
given a special magical ring. One of the
concubines, Akila, had established a trading post in a fortress known as Skull
Hill in what was, at the time, part of the nation of Lastwall. As the decades passed, Zuberi became obsessed
with immortality and begin drinking the infamous sun orchid elixir. But, this brought the attention of a death
cult that cursed Zuberi: he would have eternal life, but only as an old
man! Zuberi eventually faked his death,
hid his treasure in Sothis, and lived out the succeeding centuries in his own
tomb. Meanwhile, the three concubines
were slain instantly when the death cult’s curse severed the connection between
their magic rings and Zuberi.
Recently,
Zuberi realized the curse was finally waning.
For the first time in centuries, he started to sense the connection with
the three magical rings and realized they contained enough power that they
could be used in a ritual to restore his youth!
But how to get the rings?
Somehow, Zuberi has managed to get Pathfinder Venture-Captain Norden
Balentiir of the Sothis Lodge to send out expeditions to retrieve them. One such group (the one in The Prisoner
of Skull Hill) will be sent in search of Akila’s ring. However, Skull Hill is a very different place
than it was five centuries ago. The area
of Lastwall where Skull Hull is located long ago became overrun with orcs and
is now deeply in the Hold of Belkzen.
Skull Hill remained a hidden Chelish spy post to keep an eye on the orcs
for (dubiously!) centuries, but an even worse disaster has befallen it just weeks
prior to the scenario’s start. The
Skittering Ravagers orc tribe (led by a chief/shaman named Krug) located the
fort and overran it, slaughtering all of the inhabitants. But the orcs then suffered karma in the form
of strange rocks crashing down from the skies that wrecked much of the fort and
left craters in their wake. A strange wave
of necromantic energy pulsed from the rocks, instantly transforming many of the
orcs to undead warriors! But somewhere
far below the fort, in a vault recently-unearthed by the devastation, still
lies the corpse of the concubine Akila and her magic ring.
Whew,
that’s two long paragraphs of backstory and even then I’ve condensed it down
pretty well! As you might surmise from
the description above, tracking down the other two concubines’ rings are the
focus of Parts II and III of the series, which is why the first three parts can
be played in any order before Part IV finishes things off. There’s a lot of details that even the lengthy
backstory doesn’t really explain: what these rings are, what this death cult
was, how V-C Balentiir got persuaded/manipulated/entranced to send out teams,
how an active Chelish fort could remain unnoticed in the Hold of Belkzen for
centuries, whether the rocks crashing from the sky is related to the magic of
the ring, and so forth. In lieu of
answers, let’s get into the scenario itself.
From
the players’ perspective, the scenario starts with their characters on a ridge
overlooking the ruins of Skull Hill, with their PCs having received a “flashback”
briefing in Sothis and then a hand-waved six weeks’ of travel to get from there
to here. In the briefing, the PCs aren’t
given any of the backstory above.
Instead, they’re sent on two tasks.
First, to find a Pathfinder named Heralt who had infiltrated the Chelish
forces in Skull Hill but who hadn’t reported in lately. Second, to investigate claims in an old
edition of the Pathfinder Chronicles that the body of a legendary
Osirian sorceress named Akila had a magic ring and is buried under Skull
Hill. The “flashback briefing” (always a
bit weird) does have a nice array of Knowledge checks to get some more details.
Act
I of the scenario has the PCs exploring the settlement around Skull Hill. They see it bears signs of recent attack,
heavily cratered, and has no signs of habitation. However,
as they approach the inn, they’re attacked by a pair of orcs (who survived the
necromantic wave and have been living off stockpiled food for weeks). Near the cornfield, orc barbarians-turned-skeletal
champions attack. Some piece of the
puzzle (an orc attack) start coming into focus for the players, but there’s
clearly more to uncover. I should
mention that the map of the exterior of Skull Hill is really well-done. It’s a sizable location (especially since
there’s only a couple of encounters), so a GM shouldn’t try to draw it all out
on a flip-mat and should instead be prepared to “zoom in” only where needed.
Act
II starts when the PCs enter the fortress itself. There’s a lot of rooms here, most of them
uninhabited. This is realistic, but
definitely adds to the running time of the session as players understandably
feel they need to cautiously go through each one. There are, however, three (maybe four) things
of note. First, another skeletal champion
disguised as a corpse in the mess hall.
Second, the body of the Pathfinder Heralt—he’s been strangled to
death. Third, the orc shaman-chief Krug
is still alive, clearly entranced, boiling heads in the kitchen! In an interesting twist, Krug doesn’t want to
fight and can actually be a key source of exposition on what’s been happening
in Skull Hill. Last, there’s an optional
encounter (time-permitting) with more skeletal champions.
Act
III sees the PCs make their way down into the lost caves and burial chambers
under the fort. I remember, as a player,
being surprised at just how much content was in the module—we had explored 11
locations on the surface, 16 more locations in the fort, and were now headed
into a who-knows-how-big series of caverns underneath? Kinda crazy for one PFS session. Fortunately, there’s only one location left,
and it helps to answer what’s been going on: the spores of a Moonflower (an
alien plant monster) were on the rocks that crashed into Skull Hill. Once the PCs destroy the Moonflower, they can
search Akila’s tomb. Refreshingly, Akila’s
corpse is just a corpse—not a mummy or something predictable. Perhaps oddly, the ring cannot be removed
from her hand, so the PCs have to take her entire skeleton (or, at least, her
hand). There’s also a mysterious non-magical
wand that the scenario insists be tracked on the Chronicle but whose function won’t
become apparent until Part IV of the series.
The
Conclusion is only two sentences long: a hand-waved return to Sothis and another
mission, this time to Varisia (presumably, in Part II of the series).
I
don’t remember being particular enthralled by The Prisoner of Skull Hill
when I played it. It felt like stumbling
around mostly-empty rooms, occasionally battling orcs or undead orcs, and
eventually locating a big plant monster in the basement. It’s one of those scenarios, especially
common in early PFS, where there’s a ton of material in the backstory that the
players will never get exposed to. And
from the players’ perspective, the encounters are pretty generic and
forgettable, there’s only one opportunity for role-playing (with Krug), and not
a lot of room for creative storytelling.
All in all, not a propitious beginning to the series.
